Kathy Rees
Kathy Rees learned to cross stitch when she was fourteen years old and has never stopped using a needle. After earning a business degree and working in the corporate world for eight years, she worked in her family's needlework shop for eleven years. This is where her love of color and fiber were heightened. After catastrophic hurricane damage to the shop in 2004, she opened her own shop and operated it for six years.
Kathy began publishing her counted needlepoint designs in 2006 under the name "Needle Delights Originals", concentrating on geometrics. She specializes in color and offers multiple colorways for many of her designs. She taught a variety of needlework classes in her retail shop for fifteen years, as well as for local EGA groups. In her spare time, she enthusiastically enjoys traveling, watching sports, walking on the beach, spending time with family & friends, and being owned by two cats. She is also an avid quilter.
Needle Delights
Needle Delights was founded in 1992 by John & Jeanette Rees in Gulf Breeze, Florida. Their goal (after living around the world as a military family) was to combine the best of the needlework shops they had visited throughout their years of traveling. They offered the best needlework specialty shop with a diverse complete inventory of cross stitch and needlepoint.
In 1993, they were joined by their daughter Kathy Rees. After graduating from San Diego State University with a degree in Business Administration and Accounting and working in the corporate world for several years, Kathy was ready to move closer to her family and pursue her dreams of having a small business.
In 2004, Needle Delights was badly damaged by Hurricane Ivan and the shop was forced to close its doors. John & Jeanette decided to retire and move closer to the mountains in North Carolina. In 2005, Kathy reopened and managed the shop on her own in Pensacola until October 2011, when she closed the shop to pursue full-time designing, teaching, and traveling.